John Adams

John Adams

After waiting over a year, I finally got to see the whole John Adams mini series from HBO. I enjoyed this look at one of the founding fathers. Despite being quite knowledgeable about early American history and living in New England almost my whole life, I have never visited the Adams homestead or knew much about John Adams. I enjoyed getting to know him but he came across as kind of unbending and a blustery fool. He believed so firmly that he was right and everyone else was wrong, it made him a lot of political enemies and I disliked that aspect of his character. It seems that at times John Adams did not enjoy his political career and that Abigail was more motivated to be in the political sphere than John. I liked him better once he retired from public life in his old age. I really admired Abigail and the way she was able to counsel her husband on his political career, raise and family and take care of a farm pretty much on her own. (Surely they had servants?) She must have been an incredibly intelligent and strong woman. I liked Abigail much more than John.

The visuals were very realistic and incredibly detailed. They really portrayed colonial America as a gritty and difficult place to live. The scenes of Boston during the Boston Massacre with streets covered in snow and the water pump frozen over were particularly effective. I also thought a scene involving smallpox inoculation was disgustingly detailed. Some of the matte paintings in the background looked fake but the foreground always looked real and I believed the scenes were actually shot in Philadelphia and in the New England countryside until I saw the making of featurette which explained how they built almost all the sets from scratch. I liked seeing how the landscape and buildings changed over the course of Adams' life, especially Washington, DC which was my home for a few years. 18th century Europe was an incredible contrast to America and the European visuals were very stunning!

The costumes were incredible. The clothing really suited each character/historical figure and the clothing styles changed appropriately over time. The only complaint there was baby Thomas who wore pants instead of a short dress. John and Abigail age over 50 years and the makeup was very well done. John's teeth were particularly amazing as they became yellowed and blakened by old age and too many cigars. They were pretty gruesome to look at and I'm sure they were probably not as gross as teeth must have been in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The acting was excellent. Paul Giamatti was great and really adapted and became Adams. He didn't quite wow me in the beginning but he was especially wonderful as aging and elderly Adams. Laura Linney was also very good as the always patient but emotionally strong and intelligent Abigail. Sarah Polley deserves special recognition for portraying daughter Abigail Adams Smith and undergoing a mastectomy without anesthesia! I didn't like Jefferson so much. He wasn't as engaging as the Jefferson I met in Colonial Williamsburg. I also thought Washington seemed kind of mild but it made him human.

My biggest complaint was the timeline. When the time frame advanced, it wasn't very clear when the events were taking place. The on-screen historical facts explained when some of the events happened and the timeline of the movie didn't always seem to follow what happened in real life. The best example of that being the Adams children; Nabby and Johnny (John Quincy) were toddlers during the Boston Massacre and Charles was born later that year after the death of baby Susannah. In this production, Abigail, Johnny and Charles were young children about 10, 9, and 6. I can understand the necessity of using older children for this type of production though. My second big complaint was the odd accents of many of the characters. Abigail and Nabby seemed to have a sort of English accent and many other people had what sounded to me like English or Irish accents. I thought Thomas Jefferson should have a nice Virginia drawl, which is the way Colonial Williamsburg's Jefferson speaks.

Other quibbles include not seeing my "friend" from Colonial Williamsburg Peyton Randolph as the president of the First Contintential Congress. I also did not see Samuel Ward, Rhode Island's delegate to the Continential Congress who died in March 1776! I read his diary and was curious to see what he looked like. I did like seeing Stephen Hopkins who I have also "met" at his home in Providence. No one knows what Hopkins looked like as he was a Quaker and never had a portriat painted so it was fun to put a face to a name.

I enjoyed watching this life story of one of our founding fathers. I learned a lot about the founding of our country and the lessons taught in grade school came back when I heard some of the political discussion and I also knew some of the events from primary sources I have looked at. I would like to see a similar series about Thomas Jefferson, if they could delicately handle the issue of slavery and Jefferson's supposed relationship with Sally Hemings, his slave.